Chapter 7 - Ethan’s Perfect Alibi
Vanessa chose a crowded coffee shop.
Detective Martinez did not want me meeting her alone, so she sat three tables away in plain clothes.
Vanessa arrived wearing jeans, sunglasses and none of the arrogance she carried into Emily’s funeral.
She looked exhausted.
I did not offer her a seat.
She took one anyway.
“You have five minutes.”
“I deserved what you said at the church.”
“You said two words to me while my daughter lay in a coffin.”
Her eyes dropped.
“I know.”
“No. You don’t.”
Vanessa swallowed.
“I thought Emily had been manipulating Ethan.”
I laughed bitterly.
“Of course he told you that.”
“He said she controlled him with money. That she threatened him. That the baby might not even be his.”
My hand tightened around my cup.
“You believed him?”
“I wanted to.”
That was the first truthful thing she said.
Vanessa opened her purse.
Martinez shifted slightly across the room.
Vanessa removed an old key card.
“I was at the Monarch Hotel the night Emily died.”
“With Ethan?”
“Yes.”
That surprised me.
She showed me photographs.
Timestamped.
Ethan entering the hotel at 10:58 p.m.
Ethan inside a room at 11:12.
Ethan ordering room service at 12:06.
Security footage apparently showed him inside the hotel until 12:54.
I stared.
“But Emily’s hidden video shows him at the house shortly after twelve.”
Vanessa looked at me.
“No. It shows a man who looked like Ethan.”
My skin prickled.
“What are you saying?”
“Ethan never left the room.”
Martinez approached.
“Ms. Price, you understand lying to us now will create serious problems.”
“I’m not lying.”
She slid over another photograph.
A man in the hotel bed.
Ethan.
Timestamp 12:22.
“How?”
I whispered.
Vanessa leaned closer.
“Ethan’s younger brother.”
I remembered him vaguely.
Lucas Caldwell.
Three years younger than Ethan.
Similar height.
Similar build.
Same dark hair.
Lucas lived in Florida—or supposedly did.
“He was in Cincinnati?”
Vanessa nodded.
“He arrived two days before Emily died.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“I didn’t know until the morning after.”
She explained that Ethan left the hotel around one.
Later, when Vanessa woke, she saw messages on Ethan’s phone.
Lucas:
It’s handled. Mom says stay where you are until 1.
My stomach turned.
Ethan had built a perfect alibi.
Not because he was innocent.
Because the crime was planned.
Martinez took the key card.
“Why didn’t you tell police?”
Vanessa stared down.
“Ethan promised we would be together after Emily died.”
“You attended her funeral in red.”
Tears filled her eyes.
“I know.”
I had no sympathy.
But I listened.
“He told me Emily had fallen because she was dizzy.”
“Yet you told him he said it was already done.”
Vanessa’s face changed.
She knew Martinez had heard the conversation.
“Ethan told me he was going to force Emily to sign something that night.”
“What?”
“I don’t know.”
“He said his mother and Lucas would scare her.”
“Scare a pregnant woman?”
“I didn’t know they planned to hurt her.”
I leaned across the table.
“You wanted her gone.”
“Yes.”
The admission shocked even Martinez.
Vanessa wiped her face.
“I wanted Ethan. I wanted the life he promised. I hated Emily because he taught me to hate her.”
Her voice cracked.
“But I didn’t want her dead.”
Silence.
Then Vanessa said:
“And Ethan didn’t go to that hotel to be with me.”
“What?”
“I was his alibi.”
The affair itself had become part of the plan.
If questioned, Ethan could prove he had spent the night with Vanessa.
A humiliating story.
But not murder.
Vanessa reached into her purse again.
This time she produced a flash drive.
“I copied his phone while he showered the morning after Emily died.”
Martinez took it.
“Why?”
“Because something frightened me.”
“What?”
Vanessa looked at me.
“Ethan received a message from his mother.”
She closed her eyes.
“I still remember it.”
“What did it say?”
“‘Lucas lost control. We need to decide what Rebecca knows.’”
Lucas.
The other man.
The person wearing Ethan’s clothes on Emily’s hidden recording.
Detective Martinez stood immediately.
“Where is Lucas Caldwell?”
Vanessa shook her head.
“I don’t know.”
Officially, Lucas had flown to Miami the afternoon before Emily’s death.
But airline records revealed something strange.
He checked luggage.
Passed security.
Then never boarded.
Someone else used a private charter account belonging to Caldwell Holdings early the next morning.
Destination:
Montreal.
Passenger name:
Thomas Reed.
Security camera footage showed the passenger wearing a baseball cap.
Forensic facial comparison later gave investigators a strong probability.
Lucas Caldwell.
An arrest warrant was requested.
But before police could locate him, another revelation arrived.
The financial records from Emily’s second phone.
Payments from Caldwell Holdings to Vanessa.
Payments to Rebecca.
Payments to a private investigator.
And one payment of $250,000 made four days after Emily died.
Recipient:
Lucas Caldwell.
Description:
Consulting fee.
I stared at the number.
“They paid him after she died.”
Michael nodded.
“Looks that way.”
Then he opened another transfer.
$1.2 million.
Sent the same day.
But not to Lucas.
To a company named Bellwether Ventures.
Michael had never heard of it.
Detective Martinez traced the ownership.
When she called me that evening, her voice was unusually tense.
“Bellwether Ventures belongs to a trust.”
“Whose?”
“Vanessa Price’s.”
I felt anger rush through me.
“She lied.”
“Possibly.”
“She sat across from me and acted afraid.”
“We’re bringing her back in.”
But Vanessa never made it to the police station.
At 6:42 that evening, officers found her car abandoned near the Ohio River.
Her purse was inside.
Her phone was smashed on the pavement.
And on the passenger seat was a handwritten note.
May you like
Only one sentence:
I should never have gone to the funeral.
